Day 19
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
—JAMES 1:4-8
We can’t believe what we don’t know, and we can’t know what we don’t remember. Maybe for some of us, it isn’t so much that we doubt the promises of God, it’s more that we are wholly ignorant of them. We are at a severe disadvantage as we walk through this life, and so vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy, if we remain ignorant of who God is and what His promises are to us. We know that the Bible holds for us the key to LIFE, but we just can’t seem to find the time to open it, can we?
Knowing, remembering, and believing the promises of God is what will anchor us in this storm-tossed world.
KNOWING means we search His Word for the Truth of who God is and what He promises us.
REMEMBERING means, whatever it takes, we don’t let the cares of this world choke out the memory of those promises.
BELIEVING means, no matter what evidence we see to the contrary, we will stand firm on the Truth of those promises.
Knowing, remembering, and believing that God says what He means and means what He says is what wisdom is.
Wisdom says retreat to that inner place where God is, where our anchor is, no matter what storms rage around us. Wisdom says take one step back from our changeable circumstances and unreliable emotions, where there seems to be no evidence of God’s promises, and say: “I don’t see Your promises playing out right now, but I know YOU, I remember YOU, and I believe YOU, and You don’t say anything that You don’t mean.”
Knowing, remembering and believing are active things, and active things imply action, don’t they? Many years ago when I was fasting for 40 days, I needed help with this process of knowing, remembering and believing, so I wrote some promises of God on post-it notes and stuck them all over the house. It was YEARS later that the last one lost its stickiness and floated to the ground, and in that time, those promises had sunk deep into my heart. I KNEW them, I REMEMBERED them and soon I began to BELIEVE them. And it was this BELIEF that began to chase away the taunting and debilitating voices of doubt in my life.
KNOW, REMEMBER and BELIEVE
Your action step today: Google “God’s promises about ________” (whatever area of your life you need to believe his promises for). Read through the many verses that will show up, and when one jumps out at you, write it down and put it where you will see it many times a day.
